


Unworn World

by Amand_r, cruentum



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M, Mpreg, Other, WTF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 07:02:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/pseuds/Amand_r, https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruentum/pseuds/cruentum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack thought that John'd been way too accommodating through this whole thing, and so he wasn't in the least surprised when the doctor told them that John was too far along in gestation for a procedure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unworn World

**Author's Note:**

> Were we writing stuff we usually didn't? Was that the point of this? I think so. I think it was writing Hart and writing mpreg. So yeah. Mpreg. Thanks to paragraphs for the beta.

O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web  
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,  
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib  
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech  
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven  
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.  
\--Patrick Kavanaugh, 'Canal Bank Walk'

 

Colonial 3 was all about the human luxuries of old (the wine, the music, the company) and then, a coin toss away, the flipside with the drunk, the noise and the filth liberally strewn throughout the corridors of the cranky old space station. They were both geniuses at blending in with either. A flirt with the officers just passing through here, a rigged game of cards there with the debris waiting to hitch a flight to the next station over or back to the home planets they were only just orbiting lazily.

"BOE!" [John] shouted. He pressed his face closer to the observation window, kneeling because some twat had thought it funny to install rows of them just above the floor.

"Wrong planet."

"You're not looking."

"I'm calculating."

John looked up and [Jack] wriggled his manipulator with fancy holoprojections in John's face, the spin of the 5 planets around Anchorage in the middle of the circle they formed, holding them in their orbits. Jack and he, they had a dare running to make it to Anchorage and turn off the magnet for a laugh, just for a second. Well, he had a dare running, Jack was just miming interest.

It was easier in some ways to pretend that he was the crazy one, the one who would be all up in the bars with the drinking and unprotected sex and the pleasure booties on his hands instead of his feet. Easier because then when he did any of those things, people just rolled their eyes at the impulsive crazy instead of frowning and saying things about responsibility and 'Aren't you too old to be doing flaming bong shots from that Blummox's navel cavity?' 

You were never too old, really.

Jack was starting to show his age in that 'I'm bored with this' way but that was all just a lie, sort of, because John had been bored since he was twelve. Jack just needed to medicate more. And choke on more cock, which was hard to believe if you heard his stories, but compared to the things John saw him do the first year out of the agency, Jack was a fucking eunuch these days.

Colonial 3 was just a stop for a visit to a doctor to clear something up, a mild case of the flu, he called it, 'pregnancy' was what Jack called it, his hands flying to John's stomach every once in a while, his face all drawn and irritated like he'd eaten bad fish. John wasn't a fucktard; he knew where babies came from. He just wasn't much interested in the idea of getting rid of it. 

It would love him the best because he was the fun one. 

He'd told Jack that he was serious about keeping it when he'd thrown away all the hypervodka. Then he'd regretted that, but you know, vodka, schmodka. Sooner or later they'd have a kid, like when you grew Sea Tigers with water and marmite when you were a kid. They're not really tigers anyway, just yeast prawns.

"Only doing something for your cultural education," John said and knelt up, wiped his grimy hands on Jack's shiny faux uniform trousers.

"Watching planets?"

"Oh let's holo hoop instead," John replied and clapped his hands in fake excitement. "Live a little. Shouldn't have turned down the Fobbles when we came in last night."

"Fobbles? Really? Only you'd do Fobbles."

John smiled broadly. It had been a good night, that, a few months ago. Not that he remembered much besides ditching Jack in the pod because Jack wanted to read Jules Verne before lights-out. Power preservation routines had been a bitch on that station. John poked at his stomach. Who knew, maybe he'd have 20 furballs spilling out of him soon.

"I think I'm a Fobble-mummy!" he announced.

Jack pulled a face and heaved a sigh, pointing at the universal time displayed on the ceiling. He stood back against the other side of the corridor and let people pass, glaring at John through the gaps inbetween until John rose from the floor and looked at Jack over a group of shorties.

"It might explain the belching!" John shouted to drown out the bickering of the shorties. "They're probably naked though. Think of that, naked Fobbles."

"I didn't need to come to this, you know." Jack stuffed his hands into his pockets and glared at John's stomach before he transferred the glare to John's face.

John smiled. "You could be Fobble-Daddy! They like--"

"Not listening."

John thought about the whole idea. Fobbles in Jack's sleeves, sleeping in his cuffs. On the other hand, they weren't _whole_ Fobbles, they'd be half him. Little hims with bobbing Fobble heads. That had to be worth a laugh, sellable, maybe, spreading his kiddies across the galaxies to freak shows everywhere. 

It'd be easier to think of if he was going to sell it. Or if there weren't hormones. He understood drugs. All kinds of drugs.

"You wager it's like a defense mechanism, then?" he asked when they found the lift port. Jack let the lift empty before rushing in, but John had ducked in as soon as the doors had opened and pushed his way against the crowd. 

"What?" Jack asked. "Are you gonna boot again?"

John watched the painted wall fly past as the lift took them down and then to the right. They were in a giant ant farm here. Watch out for magnifying glasses.

"Nah only at parties."

Jack crossed his arms and tapped one foot. 

"You're going to leave me," John said, and then looked very hard at the passing walls, because he was sure that they were painted in a way that made a pornographic film when they flipped past in fast forward.

Jack shook his head. "Yeah, that's a defense mechanism, from whatever's in that thing of yours."

John did look at him then, and he blinked. Oh look at that face. That's the kind of face that could get a girl in trouble, really. "Deadbeat dad."

Jack raised an eyebrow in reply. "Yummy mummy," he replied but the voice didn't quite carry the joke.

John threw himself into pose anyway, pursing his lips until Jack gave him a small smile. He didn't quite understand the lengths Jack felt they needed to go to. Every last doctor in Leviticus-City would have known what to do with a bit of spontaneous swelling--'Doctor, I'm not sure if it's thanks to the ice cream I ate two systems over.' And there would have been a bit of congratulations here, take a pill there, ID yourself on a few screens, but Jack had to drag him out to Colonial 3 with a higher alien-to-human ratio than anywhere else near the five planets. 

"You're bored with me," John said over his shoulder to Jack as he cocked his head at the station swishing past outside their lift. He raised his hands up high and yelled, "WHEEEEEEE!"

"It's corroding your brain," Jack said, sounding bored, no news there.

When John turned to look at Jack, Jack was looking down at his crotch as if not quite comprehending how Tab into Slot functioned anymore. "Any child of ours, it will be so beautiful." John smiled.

"It's probably dead already."

John opened his mouth for a reply, then shut it and turned back around and away from Jack. The old mechanics of the lift shrieked as they moved, getting louder in the cabin.

"Sorry," Jack muttered.

John shook his head and squeezed out through the lift doors just as they were opening and before the computer could force out its "Destination reached. Thank you for choosing to travel with COLONEXPRESS."

This was a great place to get a scraping, if he had to say so himself, what with the velvet walls and the general ambiance. People walking around in wigs, white wigs, like this was a theme park. Aliens who had never set foot on Sol 3 dressed like George Washington and Laurence of Arabia or something.

Jack picked the out of the way place because he was a sodding pansy. John wasn't going to wear a fucking mumu dress and that was all there was to it.

"There was nothing wrong with the other places," he told Jack. "Does this place have Jazzercise?" Did the hand motions and everything. Good for the circulation.

Jack stared at him blankly. "Let's just get to the office."

Fucking pussy.

***

Jack flipped through the honest-to-god real paper magazine as they sat in the waiting room. John laid across three chairs, boot on the wall and rolled his head back and forth. At one point in time Jack heard him humming the jingle for Moto-Mackie's Mega Crunch and it just made him hungry. 

"Here you go," he said to John, whose head swiveled and regarded him with what might have been disdain or indigestion. "'Top Ten Ways to Lose That Baby Fat'."

John's eyes narrowed. 

The other person in the waiting room, a small Loomin with a big belly, turned its eyestalk to him, and if he was any good at reading body language he might have said it was pissed at him. 

"Er, or, 'Things He'll Never Tell You He Wants You To Do To Him In Bed'."

John waved a hand. "Always wrong. Never a Meat-puppet option."

Jack scanned the list. John was right--it was never on here. "Nobody likes that," he said to himself.

John bent his leg at the hip into an impossible angle so that he could still lie flat on the chair and put the bottom of his boot on the pastel green wall. "Nobody likes anything," he said to Jack absently, eyes on the twist of his heel. A bone clicked in his knee. 

Jack did the small labyrinth puzzle for kids on the last page and came out in the dead end. No carrot for the rabbit. He threw the magazine back on the small table of literary delights and leaned back. His chair creaked. He studied the small pool--probably for some water species--in the corner; his brain had, and deleted almost instantly, thanks, a vision of John with his legs spread and an honest-to-god human baby slipping out of him into the water.

"Where did you find this place anyway?" John tapped his heel on the wall, leaving a dark scuff. 

_Doo doo doo. Colonial 3 would like to draw your attention to our vast variety of orbit-tax shopping opportunities, in the--_

Jack reached up for the touch contact and silenced the stream of endless advertisments. "Talk."

"Extra good at getting rid of parasites?"

Jack shrugged. "Good at hybrids."

The number above the automatic doors lit to 76 and the Loomin waddled off. Walked. Waddled. John waddled. John checked his temp-ID chip for the umpteenth time and Jack wanted to take it off him and drag him back to the pod shuttle to Leviticus, get completely plastered.

John turned his head so that his ear was smooshed to the chair. He leaned forward and toppled as he overbalanced on the chairs. The chairs crashed with him and Jack was on his feet, hands on John's stomach a moment later, playing caring parent to a bulge.

"Fuck's sake," John huffed, then looked down at Jack's hands and up at Jack's face. "I'll teach it to call you Fartface."

Jack dropped his hands. "You're not three."

" _You_ 're not a non-human species."

"Account for everything," Jack replied.

John waved a hand. When Jack just waited, he shrugged. "Some of them were imaginary," he said. "Do they count?"

Jack wanted to answer with something about being serious, but the little bell dinged and the autodoors opened and they were 77 and it was all ready for a little vacu-seal. Jack had taken a girl here once, not here, here, but some place like this, and then once a Manx, and hadn't that been a problem, and he'd had to explain over and over, _No no, not the father, just a friend, a friend, no not that kind of friend, well maybe a little, but ...no! not the dad._

This time though, John crossed his arms, laid them over his bulge and widened his feet. "I don't think this is kosher at all." 

Jack pushed with his hand on the small of John's back. It was the worst thing to have to fight a pregnant person in public. John could be cutting him up with a razor, and people would still be indignant. Instead they had a little stand-off, and he wasn't giving, not this time, and John's left eye twitched involuntarily, which was as good a distraction as any to pressure the man into the doors and then it was into a hover chair and down a hallway into a room, zap went the clothes.

John put one foot in the stirrup to his left and smiled lazily. "This is how we got here in the first place, isn't it?"

Jack thought that John'd been way too accommodating through this whole thing, and so he wasn't in the least surprised when the doctor told them that John was too far along in gestation for a procedure. 

How John got Jack to buy him ice cream (advertised "Space Ice Cream! In Space!") as they walked back to their rooms, adoption papers tucked into a pocket along with the number for a good Xenobstetrician was a completely different mystery.

***

"This blows." John upended the empty glass over the bar and swivelled around on his bar stool, checking out the tasty morsels for the night.

Not so tasty if you didn't care for fleas. He'd tried to animate Jack for a game of Checknuh, but Jack had waved the cards away with one of his lazy wrist movements and took up station at the bar.

A small Gemball floated past, female of the species, and John pushed off the bar. "See you tomorrow," he called to Jack as he followed the Gemball's glowing fog through the crowds. Just his type, the right hint of aloof and sullen, as she looked over her shoulder and he grinned broadly back at her.

"You're not going," Jack said and had slung an arm across John's chest, pulling him back.

"My nipples."

"Your nipples aren't going either. Toxic levels of Co2. Ring a bell?"

Jack smelled of Colonial 3 and Just Jack with a hint of Time Agency adrenaline. John loved Time Agency adrenaline. He'd spent hours in the changing stations, head buried in someone's pants, usually with the person still in them. The glowball faded off down the corridor and John let himself sag against Jack. Life just wasn't fair. Outside the panorama windows the sun was rising over Leviticus.

"Take me to bed and talk to our babies. They'll call you Daddy."

Jack ran his nails up the nape of John's neck, nice, that, and John dropped his head back to Jack's shoulder. "Already have you for that."

"Granny then," John laughed. Jack's fingers squeezed one of his nipples as he grazed past, and John humped the chair in front of him. Not nice playing it that way. "Take me to bed and tell them stories about the sea."

Jack rolled his eyes and slapped his palm on the payment scanner as they left, just one more massive number of credits they wouldn't have to make good on with the scrambler hooking in to his doctored chip and believing that he'd just forked it all over. It was all electrons anyway, and they had plenty of those. Electrons, positrons, protons, neurons, morons. Plenty of that to go around.

Their quarters on Colonial 3 were those lush ones you could get if you gave the right person a blowjob and a quarter-million credits and a bottle of good Blanay ice wine. In the end, anyway, it was about making sure that no one got in unless you wanted, and having a place you didn't mind fucking in, sleeping in, possibly stabbing someone in. Feng suei was _key_. 

They stayed here long enough, John wanted to have the kids in the bathtub, or possibly the decorative fountain in the lobby, the one with the pissing cherubs. He ran one hand under the clear stream from some kid's weeping dick as they stumbled through the door and past it, slapping the water on Jack's shirt. 

Jack pushed him, as much as he pushed a pregnant anyone, John noticed, and almost fell atop him. Then it was his fingers playing with John's chest and the hair there over the swollen nipples and down lower, where John's cock jutted from his open trousers and laid along the curve of his swollen belly like a racing stripe maybe, one of those baby marsupials that had to crawl along their mother's stomach to get safely into the pouch.

"You think my cock will grow inwards to let them out?" John said and imagined it like one long party slide into freedom. Jack reserved any reply in an eyeroll, humourless bastard, and pulled John's cock back from his body and let it slap back to the bulge of his belly. John pushed his foot against Jack's hip. "Suck my balls," he said slowly. Something about his babies feeding on sperm, he had stopped listening, being made out of sperm, he was thinking sperm now. Maybe he could give Jack babies, too.

"Shut up," Jack said against the curve of John's neck, but he slid his hand down to John's balls and squeezed them.

John let his head fall back, pushing the baby bulge up against Jack. "Hoooorny," he said, pulling at Jack's hair that was tickling him under his chin. Moonlight Serenade came on the station player. Gotta love intuitive technology.

"You're always horny," Jack whispered in his ear, and it was the most romantic thing he'd said in weeks, except for maybe, 'We're not naming it Blargh.'

John pressed his belly into Jack as much as he could; Jack was on his hands and knees so he wouldn't put too much pressure, and John wondered what would happen if Jack just put all his weight on him and they fucked through their half-open clothes, hands wrapped around cocks and rutting, squeezing themselves together with muscles and gravity--would it hurt whatever was in there, or would it pop it out like squeezing a zit, or would it break the thing into bits, mash it like a pressed flower? 

Jack licked a swirled pattern along John's belly and smiled into the swollen skin, his fingers toying with John's balls as a precursor to fulfilling all of John's wishes. Maybe if he rubbed the head of Jack's cock, got it out of the trousers and shined it up, the genie would pop out and he'd get a few more things granted. 

The music got louder as the bed rotated towards the speakers, travelling bed in this posh place, yeah, the next time it went past the wet bar he was going for something good, something sweet. Jack's head disappeared behind John's bulge and he was about to ask what the-- when a mouth nipped at the base of his cock and lower, sucking in warm skin, and he lifted his hips from the bed, all the harder with the added hard dome of flesh that he was sporting. He ran one hand down the very top of the curve. Could they hear his thoughts? Oh hello, little thing...thingies. Mummy's getting laid. You'll like getting laid when you get older. 

Jack's tongue was all spit-slick and heat and occasionally he'd stop and do something with his hands, drop a pubic hair on John's stomach, saying, 'Blech.' John kicked him with his heel. 

"Stop killing the mood."

"Nothing would kill the mood," Jack mumbled when he parted the thigh in front of him, ran the tip of his nose along John's perineum. "You're so hopped up on hormones I could ram a butter churn up there and you'd be happy." 

John thought about the aliens on Colonial 3, setting up little milkmaid shops, impersonating a craft they never had on their planet. Making cheese or somesuch. "Oh yeah, do that."

"You're making quite the picture." Jack sucked his fingers in his mouth, then traced the tips around the rim of John's ass.

"Maybe you'll fuck our babies out of me. Hormone gush and they're in your lap." John took the time to gasp for some air, missed the table of delights again as the bed passed by, but Jack had his finger in him, crooking it, teasing little bastard.

"Getting off on this much?" Jack asked, like the answer wasn't poking at his eyeball. "Think you like the whole belly and --" Jack pushed a second finger in "-- nipples thing."

John pushed back on the fingers. Jack had always been a talker, never shutting his gob, even when he was eating out his ass. "That's me. Preggers. Take off my shoes."

Jack grunted and reached down to unzip the boots, yanking them off with one tug and throwing them into the darkness. 

John wiggled his toes in Jack's face, but Jack caught his foot and drew a thumb slowly up the sole. John groaned, pressed his back to the bed, angled his hips up, fucking the air. "Bastard," he ground out against Jack's chuckle. "Enough of your courtesan 'I was a professional whore' tricks."

Jack darted the tip of his tongue across John's arch and smiled into the pad of his foot when it hitched to kick him in the face. "You never pay me anyway," he mumbled. "I'm going to come all over that belly of yours."

Oh that was an idea. "I thought of it first," he said, then grabbed Jack's hair to yank him up. "No really. On with the fucking." Hand scrolling of a gesture, like Liz Eight used to do in the holodramas. 

There was no more playing then, when it was time to get down to business, and fucking was like smuggling, like grifting: you played a big long approach game and then in the end you just buckled down and did it. Slow or fast didn't matter, fucking shut out everything else. Except for tasting and talking. Sometimes watching the telly. He liked when Jack blew him sideways so he could watch Bikini Cops. 

Jack got lube from somewhere, it smelled like exotic jelly. Apple. It had been years since he'd had apples, and there was no more fingering or sweettalking, John watched the coloured fish in the ceiling aquarium as Jack sank into his ass to the hilt, could swear that a small fish got eaten by a larger one, but Jack smacked at his face, pulled at his hair and bit at his jaw, all to get his attention. Little bastard.

"I'm fucking against your babies," Jack muttered into John's ear as he pulled his cock out a little, then slammed it back all the way inside.

John jerked his hips up for a different angle, a different landing approach, don't throttle just yet, and pulled Jack flush, the bulge in his belly making it all the more awkward. Jack had his fingers there, scratching at the skin around his belly button, digging the thumb in as if to press them out just as he was fucking up into him.

"They're gonna look like me," John said between inhalations. He caught Jack's ear between his teeth and gnawed on it. "You're gonna build us a house, with a playfence, under the sun, with trees, like in the picture books from Earth. They're gonna call you Daddy."

"They're going to be slugfaced little monsters," Jack replied, pulling his dick out to make the shallowest motions into John's ass. John tried to wriggle for more, bear down on that cock to suck it into his ass, and Jack laughed and obliged, scratching his hands up from John's belly to his nipples, pulling at them. "Are they going to get big enough for me to tit-fuck them?" 

John dragged one of those hands down to his cock. "Oh come on, help a pregnant man out," he groaned and pumped Jack's fist under his. 

Jack came inside him, and John wondered if his babies could taste it, if it somehow got to where they were and mingled with whatever goop they swam in. Could they develop a taste for Jack spunk even from the womb, and would that be funny. Jack squeezed around John's dick then and slipped from his ass, then shoved his fingers in, squelching them through the spunk in his ass and pulling at the rim of his hole, stretching him just for the fun and the sounds.

John humped Jack's fist, pushing down on it, other hand grabbing at the plush cushions under him. 

"Could leave you like this," Jack said and blew a raspberry against the lower curve of John's stomach.

"Could stop being an ass."

"Could." Jack laughed and pressed his chin to John's belly, then his lips. "Think they're moving," he said and tightened his grip. John squirmed and tried to make every angle hurt at the same time. The hurting was when the really stellar part got started. He'd read something about BEING ALIVE, and this felt like being fucking alive, things squirming in him.

"Maybe they'll be stuck inside you forever. And die."

John curled his fingers over Jack's and dug his nails into the skin on the top of Jack's hand, until Jack's lips opened with a gasp and a bit of warm air and John came into the air and on his belly, his huge, child-infested belly covered with jizz on the outside and painted with it on the inside sort of, kids in the middle of a big old sperm sandwich. Jack laughed, a dry bark, and licked along one rounded curve, collecting a white sample in the spoon of his tongue before painting the roof of his mouth with it and smiling.

"Our kids are going to be so fucked up," John gasped. "They'll be wanted in five galaxies before they're ten."

"We can't seriously be parents," Jack said into the bend of John's knee. 

John tried to see his face but he couldn't through the bulge of his stomach, so he settled for patting Jack's hair with his hand. Good dog. Good, good dog. 

"This is about as serious as it gets."

***

Jack hated gore. It got on his clothes and he had to get them cleaned and Leviticus was, suffice to say, not the best place for that if you valued getting back what you'd handed in.

"Fucking little monsters," John screamed, and Jack remembered that he hated screaming, too.

Gore splashed. Blood and shit.

"Only one, darling." He paused and caught a good look at John's stomach held open with clamps. Another hole to fuck, but inside, something bony was pushing up against a membrane, size of Jack's fist. "I didn't know they made them that big."

The Xenobstetrician made house calls, and that was good because John had refused to leave the closet for the last three days. He stayed in there, making string puzzles with his unravelling clothes and saying something about bonnets. Jack had called the doctor and boiled some water.

Now though, after the saw and the massive neuroblocker, John's hands were restrained because it wasn't sanitary for him to be poking at his own exposed innards. Jack took the tongs from the doctor and stood there, looking at the film of John-viscera on them, all red and shiny.

"You think this is human?" the doctor said, because he hadn't met them before. Jack kept meaning to take John to the doctor, but John, John, all blow jobs and antlers. And then the nest egg building part with the double penetration and the huge grift job, that had been time consuming. So now here they were, about to unwrap the prize in the cereal box. Or something.

He shrugged. "Could be Fobbles," he joked.

The doctor cut and let the thing poke up through the membrane, then sighed. "Fobbles," he groused. 

John rolled his head to the side. No matter how much it didn't hurt, there was still a level of hurt that they couldn't take away, and after about fifteen hours of it, John was probably tired, and well, Jack knew about pain from torture. If he had anything he wanted to ask John, now would be the time to start trying. 

"I take it back," John said.

Jack smiled. "Famous last words."

The doctor lifted the thing fom John's belly and handed it to the nurse instead of Jack, and she whisked it to the porta-nicu, working on it with attachments and mini hoovers and sponges, and the doctor ran his fingers through John's cavity, extracting placenta and all those things, Jack didn't know how that worked on John's reproductive variant. Or his. It was one of those things he didn't want to have to think about. 

John laughed at the ceiling. "To the left. I swallowed my keys last year. Get 'em while you're in there."

The doctor harrumphed, and funny how doctors were all the same, like they popped fully-cloned out of a vat with the angry stares over the rims of glasses and the white hair and the disapproving fingers deep in your guts that could pull just so, to make John whimper like that.

"Getting fisted from the inside," Jack muttered into John's ear, taking in the blown eyes and clenching fingers around the restraints. He'd let John have one of his fingers to hold and it was half-dead now as Jack shook it free.

"What's the verdict, officer?" Jack asked, watching the nurse put a plunger over the thing's face and pressed a few buttons. He was ready for the bag, really, toss it in the river, or maybe they'd offer him money for it. John could get wasted. 

She picked up the thing and turned with it in her hands, her face pinched, but that was just the dew-eyed look of the Xort when they were in full happy mode. Jack forgot. She held the cloth wrapped bundle out to him and opened her speech valve.

"It's a female offspring. There are toes and fingers."

Jack accepted the thing, held it like when he'd been given his first stardrive modulator and he was afraid he'd break it over the short trip from mechanic to input valve. Squinty folds of skin were draped in folds of fabric and he stared at it, squinted himself.

"It's breathing," he said to the thing in the fabric, the _girl_. John was moaning from the table and the stirrups and the bleeping machines and Jack looked up and back down at the baby. "Looks like you."

John's ickle fingers made grabbing motions, but Jack buried his face in the folds of skin and cloth. "SMELLS LIKE YOU TOO!" he yelled, muffled to his own ears and then the baby started crying. Big mouth on something that small.

Jack stared at it as it got red in the face and wouldn't stop crying. Emergency siren, ACTION STATIONS ACTION STATIONS, but there was no fighter jet to jump into and shoot at a few buggers.

The doctor did the glasses-rim thing.

Jack held out the crying thing. "50 credits? It's brand new."

The doctor harrumphed and packed up, shooed out and the door slid into shhhhhu-shut.

"My baby," John rasped from the bed, still tied up for the kinky and dirty, probably got off on it.

The baby found the edge of the cloth to suck on and Jack sat on the chairlounge protruding from the wall, baby on his knees.

"It's a _baby_ ," he said.

John started laughing, bedframe rattling, and didn't stop.

***

The auto bottle beeped and John rolled over, snagging it and shaking. The cap flew off to the other side of the bed and landed on the other empty pillow. A small fist snaked out of a mound of blankets and he heard her little noises.

"Incoming," he said, then made the bottle dock from the far station. It was a long descent and there was turbulence and a minor radioactive disturbance from the outer moon ring, and then it had to stop to unload cargo on his arm so that he knew it wasn't too hot. Then coupling hook up and bingo. He hit the gravitational stabiliser on the bottle and left it hanging in the air above Betty's head, her mouth working the nipple, his chest tingling a bit with resentment. If he wanted, Jack would suck him later. 

Betty's eyes blinked, a crazy psycho blue, that kind that you usually have to order from the sex trolley but when two of you have them in the package somewhere, sometimes they came to the front. Whoa baby. Betty was a betty.

Jack was all for the funny names: Zarathustra, Spinnax9, NowandLater, ;--;-;cummings.';;s, but John was more concerned that he could say it fast and she be like a pin up doll. A man-killing pin up doll. He was going to teach her how to crush a man's ribcage with her thighs while she fucked him, and wouldn't that be _awesome_. Betty was classic, like roller disco and thumbscrews. 

Jack was somewhere under the mound of blankets with her, half-suffocated by baby. Obsession with smelling things, that one, and he went on about his special trade-secret pheromone shoot-up that Betty had from him, and, "She has my eyes," and he'd flutter his lashes like a ring peninsula pin-up (missing the purple skin to be hot).

Betty would have John's sex drive, and he'd got her a Chotho warrior get up at their last go round the trade markets. Jack's big hand wriggled onto her tummy and she curled around it, still angling her face to the bottle. Mummy's girl, this one. John scratched at the neo-scars on his belly that Jack wanted him to get rid of under threat of withholding sex, but they reminded John of good times.

"Bored," Jack said from under the blankets, tapping out Moonlight Serenade on Betty's tummy. "Drink up, Tiny."

"Tiny?" John slipped his hand into his trousers, giving his dick a squeeze.

"Fits perfectly."

"That's what your mum said," John replied and let out a moan, then barely ducked the bottle Jack had grabbed from the field and thrown at him. It exploded in a shower of milk against the console, drenching the back of John's head in a giant facial.

"I had a transmission last night-" Jack said.

"-that's what your mum-"

"Kronon. Simple clean-up operation."

"How much?"

Jack lifted Betty and turned her face-first to John and waggled her about. In babyvoice he said, "Enough for the high-end fructose bullshit you're feeding me."

John drew a finger through the milk on the console, smeared it over his scar, his cock and then stuck the fingers into his mouth, sucking on them. He shrugged. "Fine."

***

"Looks weird," John said, and Jack couldn't help but agree. They'd come from the blastdoors into the habitation block, blasted them away, and now, nothing. Silence. "My gut's not liking this."

"Gas."

"Postpartum rearrangement," John replied and directed his torch around the corridors.

They'd cut the power coming in and now had to manually break through all the nu-tech sliding doors. Not the best idea they'd ever had. John fancied himself some sort of superhero, cutting through with the lasersaw like it was a sword, but Jack was getting tired after the first two. 

"I hope she's playing nice with the other kids," John said absently as he wiggled the blade in the lock. 

Jack rolled his eyes. "She can barely lift her head."

John made a face. "She's crafty."

Jack tried not to think about it because when John had handed Betty to the caretaker at the day-minder's ('the kennel', John called it, and offered the automaton-nanny a freebie for taking good care of her), he'd felt a little twinge of something, and Jack didn't like feeling twinges. Not those kinds of twinges. The protective twinges. He liked the sexy ones. Electro-twinges.

Maybe it had been food-poisoning. Because his stomach was still a little flippy now, and that wasn't because they'd forked over their kid to robo-nanny for the weekend. Couldn't be.

"Are you done with that yet?" he asked, tapping his foot. Tapping his foot like a schoolmarm. Really. 

John closed his eyes and twisted the blade one last time. "That's what your mum--"

"My mum is dead," he replied.

John was never appropriately cowed by social mores. "That's why she was so still." 

Jack rolled his eyes and knocked against the glass in a _come on already_. The door gave, they were through. Why was he doing this with John? Jobs? Babies? Baby, singular. John stretched out his tongue and licked a sharp corner of the glass.

"Tasty like momma's milk," John said with a wide grin, and Jack pushed past him, leaving the crazy in crazyland.

"So where is everyone?" He pushed open a few doors, dorms deserted.

"Glastonbury."

Jack didn't bother asking where the thoughts of idiocy kept coming from. He rubbed his stomach to get rid of the twinges. He'd better not be pregnant. Watching John with the baby had made him all...hormonal. Yet another reason to get the hell out of dodge for a few days.

"Looks like something went _boom_ already," John said cheerfully as they walked into the courtyard, the vegetable and fruit plantation sprayed apart into bite-sized pieces of everything and dirt. John jumped into a hole and grabbed at the banana bits that stuck out amidst stones and pushed them into his mouth.

Jack looked around the perimeter instead and walked a slow circle. Something was off, something that made his stomach roll. They were at the center of an explosion that wasn't meant to be there _yet_ , an explosion they'd been meant to cause.

"This feels strange," he murmured, and John laughed, crawling out of the hole. 

"I think we've already been here," he said. "Look--" His hand waved in the direction of the far house, partially up in smoke. "Incendo-rounds." He turned and shook his arse and the bandolier full of rounds slung around his back waggled clunkily back and forth. "Incendo-rounds." 

The smoke spiraled from the house and reminded Jack vaguely of the last time he'd gone home and found nothing. This was different. This wasn't like that. He wasn't a _bad_ guy. 

The whole habitation block was empty, from yards to house to outside perimeter that kept out the impossible and deadly atmosphere of Kronon. Just a big bubble biosphere with them and--

His wrist strap beeped. John glanced over. "Betty?" 

Jack rolled his eyes and flipped up the cover. The holo-wave began to play automatically. 

_Attention, Agent 6ED-candy-umlaut: You have been found in violation of Time Agency codes 611-611-611-611--_

"Really? It's taken them this long?" John said, tossing a plant in the air until his own wriststrap started beeping and he flipped it open.

_Attention, Agent 9002-star-pike: You have been found in violation of Time Agency codes 611-611-611-611--_

_\--will be held in custody until such arrangements can be--_

"Oh shit," Jack murmured, looking up at the simu-sky and knowing that outside there was poison. The recordings continued to play in out of sync stereo.

_\--will be held in custody until such arrangements can be--_

"Hah, with what? Your sticks?" John did a little dance and waved his arms. "Stop! Stop or I'll say stop again!"

_\--duration for the two weeks of your trial, depending on the backload of hearings and disciplinary--_

"Oh my god, just pay the ticket already," John groaned and bent over, holding his belly. "Shouldn't have had those bananas."

_\--duration for the two weeks of your trial, depending on the backload of hearings and disciplinary--_

Jack blinked and realised what was wrong. They were already here because they were already here because this was a trap. And if he was right...

_\--Time loop in activity. Such actions whilst inside the loop are inadvisible and will trigger the paradox bomb._

Jack glanced at John. "No teleporting, shithead."

_\--Time loop in activity. Such actions whilst inside the loop are inadvisible and will trigger the paradox bomb._

John looked up from his bent over position. "So what? We're stuck here for how long? A week? Big fucking deal."

Jack checked the settings on his wriststrap. Negated anyway, but the sensors made out the loop enclosure, the devices that created it boxes planted outside the habitation. They should have seen them coming in. what had they been doing? Talking about Betty, no doubt. Eating Chay-toes with the orange-finger cheese from the bag. So lazy. So stupid.

He could blame John's hormone-addled mind, but he was just a fucktard.

"Two weeks," he said aloud, looking at the smoking house in the distance. He wanted a drink. He wondered if their past-future-past selves had torched the bar. Possibly. "How bad could that be?"

John vomited banana bits all over his shoes.

***

Jack was a spoilsport who kept walking along the perimeter of the force field playing caged tiger. John amused himself by throwing rocks at him and eating apple bits. He'd left his vortex manipulator somewhere with the upturned tree in the far corner.

"And then Sarah said," John shouted across the mud hill separating him from Jack, "not Sarah but the one, remember her, we called her Sarah, anyway, she said she'd let me pass if I took her to see Two Flags."

Jack grunted. John pitched a rock over the mud hill, laughing when a handful of nuts came pelting back at him.

"I told her if she wanted the real deal we should upgrade to Three or Four, they did the slime slide at the time, the one with the suits and the acid baths? But she wanted to do Two, and man, it was worth it."

John scratched at his tits and squeezed them a bit, then picked at the scar on his belly.

"We should log a complaint. Planned Parenthood would be on our side," John shouted but crawled into the mudhole he'd kitted out with a table cloth. Jack had taken one of the rooms in an adjacent dorm but John liked living oldskool.

[...] 

"I'm building a boat," John announced.

"Out of what?"

"Banana peels." 

[...]

Jack was missing the stars, miserable pathetic bastard, he hadn't grown up on the wrong side of the moon where you were lucky if you caught a glimmer every now and then of something twinkling along behind Satellite Alpha Three. Nothing to miss there.

"I'll fly for the fleet again," Jack was saying and his chest moved under John's ear.

John was playing with Jack's belly button. He wondered if children came out of there. He kind of forgot what Betty looked liked. Black-ish hair-ish, all toes and fingers accounted for.

Jack was tugging at John's hair and telling him stories about a war John had only heard of in history class. Funny how time bent and curled and did funny things to your stomach.

He booted on Jack's belly, the next moment they were standing in the middle of the bomb site, beeping wriststraps and their hideaway table-cloth arranged make-shift tent had become a tablecloth on the far table again. 

"I'm getting the metal pipes," Jack said.

"Don't take the broken one again, it will only rip the fabric."

Time was strange. John didn't bother checking his wristrap. It only repeated, 'Please Hold' in neon yellow. 

[...]

"All right, don't try this at home, kids," Jack said, standing on the ridgepole of the house. 

John clapped. "Get the sled!"

Jack waved his arms for balance. "We don't have a sled." He achieved a moment of perfect stillness and then glanced up at John. "Do you ever imagine that we're going a little bit insane in here?"

John lifted the hose and pulled on the trigger. "All the time."

Jack waved his hand and stepped backwards when the water hit him. "Jackass. You got my cape wet." Behind him the tablecloth flapped in the breeze. That there was even a breeze in here was odd, but there it was. 

John rolled his eyes, kicking his heels on the shingles. "It's not aerodynamic anyway. Well, maybe if you shellaced it--"

"BOOOYAH!" Jack shouted, ran down the steep slope and then jumped off the roof, spread his arms as if he was flying, and plummeted down the three stories. John gave him a twenty-one gun salute. 

[...]

"Betty Betty Bo Betty, Banana Fana Fo Fetty--"

"Stop it."

"She likes it."

"That's not Betty. That's a dead marmot."

"Me My Mo Metty...do it."

Sigh. "Beeeeetty."

[...]

"So I played the ball to Grey, but Grey was never listening." Jack bounced a rock in his hand then pulled his arm back and flung it at the building. It burst through the third window from the left, smashing glass in a shower of light.

"Sounds like an ass," John commented as he tried another handstand and tumbled face first down the watery mudslide they'd built. He spit out dirt at the bottom.

Jack threw another few rocks at another few windows until they all looked like remnants of war.

John grabbed some of the slimy mud and threw it at Jack. It hit the back of his head and Jack turned around. He was laughing. John liked him laughing, with none of the whiny nightmares and all that pish pash emotional trauma.

He slipped Jack nuwhos at night, paperstrip drug melt.

Jack didn't even notice, but it stopped him babbling about creatures and family, and he came in to cuddle looking a little braindead and smeared with mud. 

Whenever he muttered about Grey, John shoved two fingers into his mouth and Jack shut up, dreaming behind closed eyelids.

[...]

"When we look back on this, I'm going to call you my wife," John says.

Jack raised his head from the grass and watched John swing upside down from the tree limb. His face was rosy and he was trying to sip his drink from the wooden straws they'd carved. "Oh I don't think so. You're the wife."

John spit out the straw and dropped his drink. "No _you're_ the wife." 

"No, you're the wife." Jack gestured to John's still slightly saggy tits now that he'd gone topless and traced the outline of John's delivery scar with his finger in the air.

John gave him the finger and swung his legs. "But I'm a good wife. You better tell people that."

Jack laid his head back down and closed his eyes. "I don't think you can say you're a good anything," he mumbled, and then John fell on the ground at his feet, his hands flailing and slapping against Jack's calves. "Oh."

John slid up the fabric of Jack's trousers. "Itsy bitsy spider, went up the water spout."

"Don't do it."

John unzipped his trousers and smiled into the metal teeth. "Down came the rain and washed the spider out."

This wasn't fair. On the other hand, who cared about fair. Tonight they were having marmot kebabs. They were going to do sounding with the kebab sticks. John's tongue played on his slit and he forgot about kebabs for a second. 

Many seconds.

"That was Betty's favorite song," he mentioned later when John was sprawled across him, using Jack's come as a moisturiser. 

John paused. "We were awesome parents. I expect she's a champion assassin by now."

[...]

"The manoeuvre took us around the other side of the rock, we were like this." Jack spread his arms and leaned sideways, kneeling on their picnic blanket. "We had them on our radars, up almost nose to ass to the little buggers, but they kept pulling away. I told Bulldog to pull up, up, up and I'd roll under them, but the idiot didn't know what he was doing."

Jack stood, arms still spread, and ran around the bombed yard.

"I came in from the left, rolled under and got in a few good hits." He went into a roll through the mud and got to his feet again. "Bugger got me good with a few hits to the wings, but everything held together. Commander kept calling in from Control to _Abort mission! All birds back home!_ but I knew we had them."

Jack went into a dive and came right at John, running around him like a plucked chicken.

"I got Bulldog to press from underneath and I flipped over and then came right at the bugger. I could see his eyes behind the shields. Then I fired."

Jack threw himself at John toppling them both to the ground, laughing, and John felt his heart beating through his chest.

"It was the best," Jack muttered into the crook of John's neck. "They wanted to make me CAG, commander of air group, had the ceremony all pitched up and all."

John exhaled into Jack's skin.

"Then you came and blew the ship sky high."

John made a sound and let Jack gripe against him. Eventually he pushed him off. "I'm bored," he declared and stuffed a whole banana into his mouth. Jack bit off the end that stuck out and they nearly choked each other on banana pieces.

[...]

"Bananas are the fruit of evil," John said slowly, turning the fruit in his fingers like a rotisserie spit. "I have made a study of this."

"I'm rather quite sick of bananas," Jack agreed, burying another banana and covering it with dirt. "This isn't going to work."

John reached out and poured rum all over the patch of dirt. "Nonsense. Plant the banana, water with rum, and voila, daquiri tree."

When he put it like that. Jack nodded. "I wish we had some salt."

John took a swig of the rum. "Run around, we'll wring your shirt out and distill the sweat."

"That's nasty."

Curiosity made him do the laps about the perimeter anyway.

[...] 

"We should have a baby," John said.

"Yeah."

They both stared at the artificial, external power source powered arrangement of twinkle lights in the non-sky.

Neither of them moved or really meant it.

"You'll go back to the Agency?" Jack asked.

"I'll be a banana farmer." John threw a handful of dust into the air and closed his eyes when it rained down on both their faces.

"I'll be a pilot," Jack said.

"Yeah yeah, flying, planes, pilots, uniforms, you don't love me anymore. The Agency will find you. You're with them for _life_." He drew out the word. "I wonder when Betty will find out about the inheritance contract. Maybe she has already. Time is sick."

"Do you think they'll give me my stripes back?" Jack wondered.

"I'm sick of these tits," John said and pulled at them, then he turned around and started doing press ups.

[...]

Jack was in the middle of digging a sideways hole under John's tent to really give him a scare when the loop didn't reset. His wrist strap chirruped in his pocket and he dug it out, lifting the flap.

_\--standby for arrival,_ the recording finished. 

"No fucking way."

John's head popped down in the tunnel. "Ha ha, got you."

Jack was contemplating more creative methods of strangulation when his wrist strap beeped again. "Stop mucking about," he griped. "I'm not in the fucking mood."

_"Agent 6ED-candy-umlaut, mind your language,"_ said the woman's voice.

"Oh shit."

John popped his head back down in the hole and waved his arm. "Oh, by the way, we're saved."

***

"Do you have anything to say in your defense, Agent 6ED-candy-umlaut?"

Jack shuffled his feet a bit, but he was at ease, so it was okay. Next to him, John deliberately breathed out through his nose so he could hear the whistling of his deviated septum. 

"Uhm, he was a great wife?"

John turned his head to him. "Aw, buttercup, thank you."

"You're welcome," Jack returned.

"Agent 9002-star-pike?"

"Me? Yes. Hello." John waved. "It's Cap-"

"Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

"It's Captain Banana Boat, actually," John replied. 

"Captain?" Jack motioned three stripes to his clothes.

"Farmer is not a title, is it? No, I like Captain." He turned back to the board. "Change it to Captain in your files. Defense, I don't know, didn't do anything."

"You extorted over nine million credits--" 

John waved a hand. "That? Oh, that well, I was under the weather."

The Review and Inquiry Board hadn't been too merciful on them. They had read the charges, but they had all been numbers and Jack couldn't remember what crimes went with what numbers. To think he used to have this shit memorised. On the other hand they could be charging him with all kinds of things he didn't do....nah, he did them. Well, maybe. 

If it was really _really_ bad then it was probably John's fault.

"What's the date, again?" Jack threw in when John got bored and started scuffing his shoe at the holo platform that had the board flickering.

"It's-"

"I'm bored," John said over the reply. "Let's go."

Jack couldn't fault the notion but he wanted the piloting gig and it was too much of a pain to get in on charges and community work rather than credentials. 

"Given the nature of your abuses, and the time served inadvertently whilst waiting for trial, we have commuted the bulk of your sentence."

Jack felt something in his chest loosen and John turned to him. "My sentence has a lot of semi colons in it."

Jack nodded at the holo display. "Thank you for your mer--"

"You are both remanded to rehab and remustering for a period of no less than six weeks. If after that period--"

"Whoa, wait!" John drew himself to full height and stepped back. But the platform wasn't that big and he fell off. Jack stared at him on the floor. 

"If after that period you have shown progress, we will consider reinstatement or reassignment." 

They had to drag John down the hallway, but Jack just walked ahead, hands free. Six weeks in rehab was going to suck, but at least they'd have hot meals. That and he had goals. Well, and John was doing enough shouting for the both of them. 

"I HAVE RIGHTS," John complained loudly. "I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE BUT IF A TREE FALLS IN A FOREST AND IT MAKES A SOUND, THERE ARE UNALIENABLE RIGHTS FOR THINGS."

Yeah, maybe he could ask for separate rooms.

***

"You know, I hate bananas." John shrugged. "I think I've built up an allergy." He paused. "Maybe the bananas are allergic to _me_ , and that's the problem." Jack snorted and John raised an eyebrow. "It's not always about me. I learnt that recently."

Rehab had sort of fixed parts of John, and then it had just created new issues. John's current favorite phrase was 'owning the moment'. Jack didn't know what that meant, but he was seriously thinking of owning a moment with that Plon that he saw all over the campus. _Major_ plumage. Meant it was well-endowed. 

"You're really going to do this," John said sourly. 

"Yeah, I am."

"They're wearing uniforms. They'll never take you."

Jack ignored the yammering John hadn't stopped since they'd made it to War College registration, walking along green lawns. Cadets did the finger to head thing to seniors and John kept flipping them off just to provoke a frown.

"I know how to fly," Jack said as they approached the main building.

John ran across the lawn, then let himself fall and roll over grass and leaves as if it was some kind of virtual reality ego game that made him test boundaries. Jack caught up to him, crouched in the grass and looked across at all the wannabe pilots, those kids.

"I've flown for them before."

John snorted and pulled Jack down, blew a raspberry to his cheek, and Jack let him. "You've fought their wars for nothing, no thanks, nothing of anything."

"I'm good though," Jack said after a moment and John pushed him away so they both lay in the grass, staring at a deep blue sky.

"They'll start you scrubbing toilets."

A bell rang somewhere. Class. Jack felt like a child again, not someone who survived wars and John.

"My callsign-"

John made a question mark sound in his throat and grabbed Jack's hand, tracing lines along his palm like they were playing in the sand years and years back, sandworms getting into everything.

"Name, pilot name. They make you pick something, maybe so they can shoot you down and forget who you are. I bet it will be something good. Memorable."

"Marmalade."

"What?"

"Lady Marmalade. That's what I'd call you."

"We should do it together," Jack said over the chatter of a group of young men walking past them.

John dropped his hand and shrugged. "Yeah, I don't think so." He blinked. "They make you revise. And you're not allowed to use thrusters until after you leave port dock. Laaaaaaaame."

There was some sort of foreign birdsong, and Jack realised that in the five years they'd been stuck in that place, there hadn't been any birds. It was strange and reassurring to hear them now. 

"So are you going to go back and get her?" It was the first time he'd mentioned Betty at all, didn't want to be too deliberate, anyways. 

"Her, her, you mean Sarah?" John asked, turning his head. "I think she married that bloke with the split tongue." He paused. "Hell, I would have married that bloke with the split tongue."

"No I mean--"

"No."

"But--"

"No." 

Jack closed his eyes and thought about her blue ones. He thought about the way she smelled like sour milk and powder. He thought about the first time she'd wrapped her little hand around his finger.

Still, for the best, really. John rolled over to lay partially on top of him, mouth seeking out his neck, and he let him bite him, stopping to lick the skin in between sucking, sniffing partly to smell and partly because his nose was running. Jack didn't want to think about that. If he just lay there and stared straight up, gravity kept the tears in the ducts for him, and that was pretty damn important right now. 

***

The path on board was narrow with a few Treacs littering their plastic wherever they went and John followed them, stepping on a green plastic skin sleeve and a red plastic skin sleeve, a game of solo Twister, until the belly of a ship swallowed him up. He didn't trust the bucket much, too much old metal, but they were leaving in a few ticks and would be outside federal boundaries even faster.

John stood in the middle of reception, fiddling with his plastic chips. He'd left when Jack had ducked away behind a tree to take a leak on Fleet Property, would serve him right if he got the first frowny face on his record for that.

It had been a good getaway.

Then Jack had run after him and given him the forever-always and I'll-miss-you-and-find-you at the gates. It had all been a lot like their first meeting aboard the scavenger ship that had got them into the refugee camp.

Jack had-

Jack had. Jack said. Jack did. Jack wanted. Jack loved. Jack Jack Jack Jack Jack Jack Jack Jack.

Commercial wares were peddled over the speaker system, and John paid for a joghurt dispenser with his last legit plastic and took it to one of the windows. It was all bananas and little skimmed milk, the type they got out of plastic bags.

Figured it had to be banana. 

Reception was noisy and processing would take hours.

The ship rumbled, take off, all thrusters engaged and go.

John kind of loved banana again, the same way he loved Jack. It made him sick and gave him a bellyache for days and days and days so he stuffed his face with it now. 

He sat on the floor to look out through the window at the bottom and see the stars fly by. Someone asked him for extra plastic and he booted all over their feet. Scaravian, he liked those, and he nearly crawled off after them to ask for a date.

Colonial 3 was a few hundred light years away. He pulled up the hem of his jacket, and the shirt and the shirt underneath that and picked at the faint scar on his belly. Leviticus disappeared in the stardustcloud as they pulled away from the port, but he wasn't watching that anymore.

The Scaravian was giving him rootle gestures, and how could he resist that?

Off to new adventures, up and at them.

The End 


End file.
